Carrie Underwood -- she's singing the anthem tonight -- I know. I don't mean personally, but I know that she won the American Idol competition a few years ago. I had to bone up on AI history a couple of years back, when the boss figured it'd be fun to have me profile Ryan Seacrest, Idol's host.

Meh. If Gillin can find the link, you can decide for yourself. (Ed. note: You can read that Seacrest profile here. Gillin out!) I myself liken the experience to spending three days with the human equivalent of a potted fern. But I managed to learn a couple of things:

1. Simon Cowell not only is not a dick, he's also very smart, one of the three smartest men I've met in the course of my Esquire duties. (The other two are Dave Lavery, a roboticist and NASA dude, and Don King.) Also, he smokes Kools.

2. In the entire history of American Idol, not one of those sorry motherfuckers who won can sing for shit -- not one. Zero. The guy who won the year I wrote about Seacrest -- his name was Taylor Hicks, I believe -- never did hit a single note. Travis Hafner came closer to Josh Beckett's curveball than Hicks did to anything resembling a melody.

Bottom 1: Kazuo Matsui gets trapped in a rundown off second base on Matt Holliday's come-backer to Dice-K. This bodes ill.

Dropping the pair in Fenway wasn't the end of the world. Coming back home and playing bad baseball isn't, either -- but it will be the end of the Rox season. They aren't about to win tight games against the Sox without playing flawless ball, and as for outslugging 'em...how? Just listen to all this humidor-driven bullshit and you'll wonder how they manage to score any runs at all.

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I understand the humidor, okay? Enough with the humidor. How about this? Coors Field is still the third-best hitters' park in MLB (according to ESPN's 2007 park factors). Yeah, I get that it's home to a good-hitting team, but just lookee here: Matsui's home-and-away OPS split is 226 points. Matt "MVP" Holliday's? 297. Tulowhatsis's? 241. Hawpe's? 186.

As a team, the Rockies' OPS is 121 points higher at home. The Red Sox split -- and Fenway is the highest-scoring park in baseball -- is 75 points. (Wrigley Field is #2 for runs, and the Cubbies' split is 57 points.) Something's off here -- and sure, it's probably me. But I still say that something's wrong -- amiss, misshapen, plain missing -- in the Rockies' offense.

Bottom 2: Hey, look -- it's Cory Sullivan. And you can see right through him.

Top 3: Matsuzaka pounds a two-run single through the hole and claps his hands all the way down to first base, where he embraces the coach, then points both index fingers at Josh Fogg while shouting, "You suck!" at the top of his lungs.

Not really. His expression never changes. The sad-eyed lady, with his saintlike face and his ghostlike soul. Inscrutable.

6-0, Sox.

Top 4: Ken Rosenthal, who files eighteen stories a day during the off-season, says the Indians are one of the teams looking at Mike Lowell, who'll be a free agent, to provide an "upgrade" for them at 3B. Rosenthal's a first-rate reporter, but I hope he's wrong, because this is exactly the kind of move that I'd have hoped Mark Shapiro would've outgrown by now.

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I think quite highly of Lowell, who's not only a proven winner with plenty of veteranian presence -- I must pause for a moment here to throw up in my mouth -- but who's a fine ballplayer to boot. Still, paying big money for a guy his age -- he'll be 34 next season -- is a truly bad idea. Even if the Tribe's front office has decided that Andy Marte is not going to be a quality everyday major-league third-baseman, what's the point of reliving the Travis Fryman/Aaron Boone last-mile experience?

Don't get me wrong: The upgrade from Casey Blake's 2007 to Mike Lowell's is major, at the plate and in the field. Still, no amount of money will guarantee a repeat of Lowell's '07 performance -- and that's what any team that signs Lowell will be paying through the nose for in '08, plus two or three years beyond. Giving up on a much younger player without giving him any honest shot, then throwing stupid money at an older player's past: not a smart move for a smart club.

Top 5: J.D. Drew now has a 9-game postseason hitting streak.

J.D. Drew has made over $50 million playing baseball.

J.D. Drew's own dog still won't lick him. J.D. comes home after a road trip, walks in the door, and the dog -- Boras -- just shrugs and takes a whiz on the dining room rug.

Bottom 6: A Rockies rally! 6-1! 6-2!! And then, with two men on, Spilborghs jumps on a Timlin unsinker, ripping it 414 feet to center, where the wall is 415 feet away. A minute later, FOX shows Spilborghs in the dugout, just as he mouths the word "fuck" to himself. Three teammates rush over to join him for an impromptu prayer session.

6-2, Sox.

Bottom 7: Okajima comes in with two aboard, throws an extremely scrutable first-pitch fastball to Holliday, and just like that it's a 6-5 game. In the clouds above Coors Field, Jesus and Izanagi, a Shinto deity, pop another couple of ice-cold Kirins and resume arm-wrestling.

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6-5, Sox.

Top 8: Fuentes in.

Jesus wept.

9-5, Sox.

Top 9: Mike Lowell singles, Cora bunts him over, then he steals third without a throw and scores on a sac fly. Somewhere in Cleveland, Mark Shapiro has long since gone to bed. I hope.

10-5, Sox.

*****

Eric Gillin: I haven't heard anyone from Fox or ESPN say this yet, but the Sox scout team has done a remarkable job this series.

Apparently, that Holliday pickoff in Game Two was 100% due to advance scouting. In that particular situation, with Holliday on first and the game on the line, there are two crucial facts to understand: One: Papelbon has never picked off a runner and rarely throws over to first, choosing to level a hateful glare at whoever's in the batter's box. And two: Matt Holliday tends to break for second on the first pitch. According to my dad (my personal color guy in the realm of Boston sports), Sox bench coach Brad Mills had a color-coded chart that flagged this tendency, sent a signal to Varitek, prompting the eighth-inning pickoff and essentially ending Colorado's chances to steal a game at Fenway.

How did Mills develop that information? Was it the result of Sabermetrics? Or was this just old-fashioned "baseball gut" in play?

Personally, I'm not a fan of Sabermetricians and their wacked-out numbers. As someone who wants to spread the gospel of baseball to nonwatchers, I think this intense nerdification of baseball is a bad thing, adding new levels of obscurity and complexity to a sport that's already slow-paced and prone to endless bouts of in-game navel-gazing. (With their propensity to spend their time indoors, no girls anywhere, auditing data -- for fun! -- most baseball statisticians are like D&D dorks, minus the 20-sided dice.) When VORP, PW/BFW, and DIPS start appearing on the back of Topps baseball cards, with a slice of stale pink gum that tastes like something from an Egyptian crypt, perhaps then I'll pay closer attention to what those stats mean.

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This isn't to say that Sabermetrics is useless, but how much of it is trendy statistical hokum and how much of it is an exploration into the underlying world of Baseball Science? Are all these stats merely statistical proof of what my baseball gut is already telling me? Or do these stats somehow reveal deeper truths, ones that might seem counterintuitive at first blush?

Who knows? The only stat I care about right now is the W. And hopefully, we'll get one more of those tonight.

*****

Jay Levin: Oh, Eric. I am so sorry. I mean, you had it coming -- if Scott and I had it coming, then you definitely had it coming -- but I honestly take no pleasure from it.

Scott and I jointly cursed the entire NLCS -- he called it "a toss-up," I predicted "a very good series" -- and it promptly became one of the least close and least interesting postseason series in the history of the game, a distinction it held onto for nearly ten days.

While I never said Paul Byrd was a great pitcher, I did say he'd win the Congressional Medal of Freedom, which now looks like something of a long shot.

With that in mind, it's time I made one of those firm predictions Scott has been asking for: Rockies in Seven.

*****

Eric Gillin: Oh, I don't think I cursed Okajima. The guy had to pitch his way out of a big jam -- two on and zero outs -- against Matt Holliday, the Rockies' best hitter. He didn't get it done. But then he settled down pretty fast and K'd Atkins and Hawpe, then got Yorvit to ground out, ending the inning and the Rockies' chance to win Game Three.

*****

Jay Levin: I've given Hurdle lots of credit for bullpen management, while allowing that a bunch of good players will make any manager look good, but Game Three presented him with a particularly thorny moment. Fogg looked good early, but he opened the 3rd by giving up two doubles and a single up the middle (mixed in with a swinging-bunt and an intentional walk).

Now, all of that sucks, and there are a couple runs in already. But still: He's facing the bottom of the lineup now, and that last single was just a grounder, and you've got the DP set up and a bad baserunner on second. And after all, you have to give your starter a chance to give you a few innings if you want to win, right? Don't you?

Well, Fogg got an infield popup, followed by another seeing-eye grounder to left -- this was the play where Manny got thrown out at the plate. And then he walked Lugo on four pitches, but remember, this is with the pitcher on-deck.

Still, now what do you do? On the one hand, Fogg's retired only one batter out of eight. Still, he's gotten all those grounders and an infield popup, and all he's got to do is retire an AL pitcher -- 0-for-career -- to end the inning. And again, you have to give your starter a chance to give you a few innings if you want to win, right?

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It happens that Rob Neyer wrote an interesting piece yesterday in which he suggested Hurdle needs to be more aggressive in removing his starters, who are easily exhausted, in favor of his relievers, who are deeply competent:

"It's fairly clear that his starting pitchers are not going to give him more than four or five innings, and that he'll be forced to use his relievers for at least half the game. So why not make that the model? ... this season Hurdle probably enjoyed the services of more reliable relievers than any other manager in the majors. Why not get them into the game when you want to get them into the game, rather than when you have to?

"For most of the season, Manny Corpas was one of the best relievers in the National League. In the Rockies' last two games, Corpas has thrown seven pitches. That model worked well for six-and-a-half months. It's not working now, and won't work."

This would have been a good strategy for several managers up to this point, but I'm not sure you can fault Hurdle for sticking with his starter last night. For one thing, he wasn't even through the third inning yet, and for another, this game is the first of the only three-game set of the entire postseason without a scheduled off-day, and thus the riskiest time to start burning your bullpen.

Ultimately, though, even this test fails. This was an elimination game -- that is, both the game's history and the math dictates that we regard it as such. You could excuse Hurdle for leaving Fogg in to face the pitcher -- what were the odds that wouldn't work? -- but he then left Fogg in to face Ellsbury.

In that final nonmove, if not earlier, Hurdle failed to respond to the urgency of the situation. And as an aside, who would have guessed that the Rockies' infield would let so many grounders sneak through in an inning?

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*****

Jay Levin: Since I'm already dumping on Hurdle, while it's nice that he finally gave Taveras a start at his natural position -- the bench -- he managed once again to overlook Spilborghs, the best centerfielder on his roster.

Spilborghs bats from the right, so it's a natural choice to go with the rangier and leftier Sullivan against a righty starter. Platoon splits are incredibly steady throughout the history of the game, more reliable than just looking at one season for one player. There are, however, two problems with keeping the decision this simple.

First, the gulf between the two men's purely hitting ability is so huge that it completely overwhelms the platoon factor. In the minors this season, Spilborghs managed a 910 OPS against righthanders, while Sullivan posted a 661. In their brief big-league careers, the numbers are 772 for Spilborghs and 728 for Sullivan.

Second, outfield defense is valuable, but it's not everything. Yes, it may make the difference between a key double (Ellsbury's popup falling in right) and a key out (Spilborgh's flyout to deep center), but it only rarely defends against a hard liner. Catching flyballs is great, but hitting line drives is paramount.

Not only that, but Spilborghs is a fine defender anyway! He may not look as speedy as Taveras and Sullivan, but the numbers have him getting to just as many balls if not more. I'm not saying you trust the numbers over the scouts on this, but the scouts don't hate Spilborghs, and the numbers love him.

Not only should he have been in the lineup for most if not all of the past two weeks, he clearly should have been in right field in the first two games, rather than the DH -- you won't find any scouts or numbers arguing against that.

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So what can Hurdle possibly be thinking here? Is Spilborghs not gritty enough? Is he not Christian enough? Is he nailing Hurdle's daughter?

Lest you think this is much ado about nothing, consider this: If Francona were as thickheaded about this kind of thing as Hurdle has been, you'd have seen Crisp starting in center last night rather than Ellsbury. I wonder what that game would have looked like?

*****

Eric Gillin: Yesterday, I chastised the Colorado Rockies for their long infield grass, which neutralizes one of their biggest advantages over the Red Sox: Their infielders can get to more balls. It wasn't a deciding factor in last night's game, but the jungle grass definitely helped the Sox more than it helped the Rox.

In the first inning, both Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia legged out infield singles that would have been outs on a different surface. In the second, Matsuzaka made a nice stab on a Holliday grounder that probably would have gone straight through the infield, and picked off Matsui at second, killing a nascent rally. Then, in the third, Pedroia got a bunt single to kick off a six-inning rally and I stopped keeping track of minutiae like this that interests only me.

I wonder if they'll cut it before tonight's game.

*****

Scott Raab: Here's to Aaron Cook, who last faced a major-league hitter on August 10th. He's coming back from a strained oblique, baseball's trendiest injury. Cook also survived blood clots in his lungs in 2004, which nearly killed him -- so he knows full well that, win or lose, it's only a ballgame.

Which is a good thing to know, because tonight Cook will take the ball for the Rockies, down 3-0, and facing a team that's now hitting .352 for the Series, with 16 doubles in three games and a BB/K ratio of 18/16.

Jay Levin: Funny how once Boston went up by six runs, 13 out of the next 14 Red Sox batters went down in order, interrupted only by an A-Rodesque double by Drew (of course). But then, once the Rockies made it close, four of the next five Sox batters reached base, scoring three runs to put the game more or less out of reach for good.

I don't know exactly what to think of this. Maybe it was just Fuentes hitting the same late-October wall hit earlier by Okajima, Betancourt, Perez, and a few other great relievers (possibly the same wall Gagne hit in August).

Or maybe it's just the latest trick from an enormously talented team, one that crushes the ball when they're paying attention and otherwise sleepwalks through games. The same team that laid down for five innings against a long reliever a week ago. The same team that lackadaisically played out the last four months of the regular season, still finishing with the game's best record.

In other words, a team that has taken on the personality of its one true leader: Manny Ramirez.

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